


Breaking Forward

by TheWritingSquid



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dadgil Week (Devil May Cry), Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-DMC5, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28096326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWritingSquid/pseuds/TheWritingSquid
Summary: In which one of Vergil's and Nero's tense sparring sessions takes a turn for the worse, and brings their awkward relationship in a new direction.
Relationships: Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 135





	Breaking Forward

**Author's Note:**

> This is my LITTLE BOY LOST, LITTLE BOY FOUND piece! Glad to finally share it with everyone <3
> 
> Had fun with the omniscient narrator voice in this one ^^

Routine had a way to shatter at the most unexpected of times, although perhaps this particular happenstance could have been predicted, had the players involved held the skills necessary. Unfortunately, it would be ludicrous to ascribe a keen sense of empathy for others’ needs to Vergil, or the foresight to anticipate them and avoid harm. Perhaps routine could have been maintained, had his son possessed the self-awareness to notice warning signs, and the willingness to acknowledge the inevitable path they’d lead him to and back down from it. As such was not the case, however, nothing could be done to avoid breaking the peace they’d built around their weekly spars.

Afternoon light bathed the small clearing, piercing through the canopy of nearby trees, its golden hue alighting upon the two fighters. It was altogether too hot a day to be battling this intensely, and hours of dedicated training had left them sweating, coats thrown away. Not that Nero cared; he would not have cancelled this rare opportunity for anything but the most dire emergency. Vergil had returned months ago from the underworld, yet these precious hours remained the only ones in which they ever seemed to connect—even if those “connections” were mostly fists on jaws and blades through flesh.

Although Nero craved for more—and had all his life—he forced himself to be satisfied by these fleeting instants, convinced his father did not care for more. As far as he was aware, all the man did was fight and read, spending whole weeks without speaking a word beyond low threats during battle against Dante or him. As Nero had no intention of talking to a wall of silence, he’d figured hitting it made for a nice replacement. 

He was, coincidentally, getting better at it. Every week he picked up new patterns, formed new tricks—but so did Vergil. It turned each of their training sessions into brutal, grueling battles the likes of which Nero rarely experienced anymore, in which everything mattered: the speed of your reflexes, the angle of your blade, the strength of your leaps. Against Vergil, the slightest mistake was fatal.

That line of thought should, perhaps, have been Nero’s first sign that his mind had set foot on dangerous paths. He and Vergil were no longer trying to kill one another, yet he could not discard that particular impression—especially when his ears rang from the clash of blades and the air crackled with Vergil’s power. Instincts pounded at him to pour everything into the battle, that death was coming for him in the form of a blue demon. 

Nero gritted his teeth through it, focused on the battle itself—on Vergil’s weaknesses, how he fared way better when he could bring the full length of his katana into play. Nero stepped closer with a whirl, bringing Red Queen down in a powerful attack as he spun on himself. Shock spread through his arm as the Yamato met his blade, and Nero let it go with his right hand, bringing it into a fist.

Vergil’s eyes widened as Nero came right up to him and punched out, eagerly awaiting the satisfying crunch of his fist connecting with his father’s nose, which the man so quickly turned up at all he deemed unworthy of his attention. But while a rattling gasp betrayed his surprise at the attack, Vergil nevertheless leaned out of range in a fluid motion, reaching up and grabbing Nero’s wrist as it passed above him.

And in that precise moment, had Vergil considered the current circumstances and those of his first meeting—had he paused instead of pulling on his son’s forearm—much of their lives might have been different. But he was in the heat of battle, focused only on victory and his precarious position, and he yanked hard and fast.

Nero’s vision blurred as fingers clamped around his arm and pulled, visions of the past melding into the present. Cold power bristled through the air, a demon nearby rattled in a laboured breathing. The golden afternoon light belied the violence about to happen. Pain flared through his arm, muscles clenching. He remembered. The sudden pull, the agony. It all slammed into him again, his throat tightening and his heart hammering as reality fused with memories.

He would not let it happen, wouldn’t be weak and defenceless, wouldn’t let anyone take his power away. It was _his_ , a shining core at his centre, his legacy. Nero growled, his skin crackling with blue energy, his vision white hot as he unleashed the demon within.

A pulse of power burst from him, knocking the breath out of Vergil, and as scales burst under his fingertips and wine red ridges sprouted along Nero’s shoulders, he froze. The rules had been no powers, and he could only stare as Nero’s eyes turned golden, his hair stretched and tumbled into a full-length white mane, and his snarl acquired teeth. Nero did not always play fair, but he’d never broken agreements in such a fashion before, and Vergil could not understand it. 

Two bright wings snapped behind Nero, and a clawed wing clamped down on Vergil’s own wrist and snapped it like a twig. The bone snapped, pain jolted through Vergil’s entire body, and the second, massive hand wrapped around his chest, pinning the second arm to his side and crushing the air out of his lungs. For a moment, Vergil’s thoughts scattered, his healing struggling to fix an arm still held at an impossible angle, his breathing constrained to feeble wheezes. Power swirled around Nero, coming out in irregular and aggressive bursts, and as blue claws dug into Vergil’s back, memories long buried crawled to his mind.

He saw himself as a teenager, his devil form flickering back and forth, energy washing through him in painful waves, leaving him ragged and fatigued, unable to calm the alarms in his mind, like raw instincts constantly screaming danger at him. Remembered the demon blood and entrails clinging to his claws, how their stench would slip into his nightmares until he’d wake, half-transformed, huddled in a cave or an abandoned attic. Remembered, too, his own state as he’d reached for Nero’s arm and the Yamato, his reality fuzzy at the edges, pain clinging to him in an unbearable web.

And for all of his inherent inability to read others, Vergil did understand this: Nero was not himself. Pain caged him, distorted his actions—a pain Vergil himself had caused, scraping his way to survival. He’d inflicted much of it through his desperation and single-mindedness, most of which he had no desire to reflect upon, but what he had done to Nero—to _his son_ … Vergil would carry that particular regret within him for the rest of his life.

He refused to add to it.

Nero’s spectral hand squeezed his chest, unnatural strength pressing down on his ribs, and Vergil gritted his teeth, reining back the demon energy pushing against his skin, eager for him to match the threat before him and transform. He reached for the strands of space-time all around him instead, pulling them to a stop, and a cool wave of power washed out of him as time froze to a standstill.

Vergil swallowed hard, his gaze finding Nero’s golden eyes. Once, his son had burst through the Qliphoth’s floor, single-handedly changing the course of Vergil’s life—promising with undue confidence that none of them had to die.

That Nero was still in there, Vergil reasoned, and—drawing strength from that certitude—he dug his heels. Without escaping the crushing grasp around him, he pushed himself closer, until he was leaning against Nero’s chest. He freed his healthy arm from the hold, bringing one hand to Nero’s cheek as he allowed time to unravel itself once more. 

Nero’s hold tightened right away, almost crushing the words out of Vergil. He gasped, but held on tight, hooking himself into his son’s molten eyes.

“Nero…” His lungs burned with the word, but Vergil had dealt with pain far worse in his life, and he knew better than anyone what drove the demon in Nero. “You have nothing to fear. I won’t attack you. You’re in control now, completely.” 

His thumb ran along the red streaks across Nero’s face, slowly, softly, and a single word he had thought buried deep within, never to be claimed, bubbled up. 

“Son.”

It stumbled out of his lips, and Nero’s eyes narrowed, his grip tightening. Vergil closed his eyes. How sweet it had felt, to utter it, to feel his own pride and love wrap itself around the simple word. Slowly, despite the pain in his arm and ribs and lungs, despite the exhaustion of his healing powers struggling to fix his body, Vergil smiled. 

“Son,” he whispered again. “Our future is yours to decide. I hope you will make the same choice now as you did on the Qliphoth, but I know that no matter what you decide… I know that unlike me, my son makes the right choices.”

Vergil believed with absolute certainty that had the roles been reversed, he would have cut through Nero without pause, carried by decades of pain. He saw himself as a man of mistakes, his inner strength twisted by trauma, and he had yet to realize the latter was burgeoning back, nourished by his love for Nero. It allowed him to hold strong now, waiting for judgment.

Nero stared at him, and the blue energy radiating from his core turned the same golden as his eyes, briefly shining in the peculiar hue of love and safeness before the power swirling around them resorbed, slinking back into Nero, scales and ridges sinking into his skin until he stood, fully human once more, his two bright wing-arms the only sign of his transformation.

The present had regained its rights into Nero’s mind, though in many ways the tender touch upon his cheek seemed the most impossible of realities. Nero trembled, a full body shudder hiding a half-sob, and his hand shot up, to settle over Vergil’s. He held it there, out of breath and exhausted, reeling from his ordeal. They weren’t fighting anymore. Vergil had stopped—had submitted to him, offered him _his life_. Weeks without talking, with nothing but quick, brutal sparring matches, and now this? Nothing cold remained in Vergil’s gaze, no trace of haughtiness and doubt, only this strange, unprecedented softness. 

Only three words formed in his stunned mind: What, The, and Fuck.

Nero stumbled back, his blue arms vanishing as he did, and he sank to his knees without a word. His fingers dug into the grass and earth, and he focused on that sensation, letting shock and exhaustion slide over his back—a much-needed pause as the poor boy readjusted with the new reality.

Vergil did not move closer. His boots shifted at intervals, betraying his discomfort, and impossibly long minutes passed them by. It may have been wise for him to share some reassuring words or an apology, but each ill-thought iteration these remained stuck firmly on his tongue, self-consciousness and decades of prideful loneliness superseding any desire to reach out. At length, Vergil bent forward and picked up the Yamato, sliding it back in its sheath, his snapped arm healed to perfection. Nero exhaled, slow and steady, then reached for Red Queen’s handle and struggled to his feet.

“We should return,” Vergil stated. His voice had recovered all its usual smoothness, and he stared in the distance. A million seconds could go past, and yet the man’s stiff brain would be no more capable of bringing forth meaningful words. That brief moment of courage was past, and Vergil eagerly retreated behind his usual walls.

“Yeah…”

Nero huffed, the remembered warmth of Vergil’s had on his cheek warring with his wounded pride and subsequent desire to bury the event forever. He picked up his coat, throwing it over his shoulder as Vergil draped his own across his arm, and they left the training clearing behind.

Silence draped itself around them again, yet Nero did not feel the need to force words between them. For once, it did not grate him, more voluble and impatient, but offered them both a much-needed pause to recover in full. Nero trailed a step behind his father, a quiet warmth spreading through him. He would never forget the love and pride Vergil had imbued into the word ‘son’, or how he’d trusted Nero with his life at a moment when Nero himself had lost control, allowing his demonic instincts to claim him. Vergil had known how to call him back. He had understood and cared enough to do so.

Sometimes, it was necessary for routines to break in order to move forward.

Nero ran a thumb along his cheek and a wolfish grin spread across his face, coming to a single, heartfelt conclusion. He’d been right to spare his ass, atop the Qliphoth, and no matter how unreachable Vergil seemed, somewhere under the icy wall was a marshmallow centre. And Nero, as always, would be happy to bring the fire.


End file.
